


Do You Know How It Ends?

by rubycrowned



Category: 1D - Fandom, One Direction, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, So much angst, terminal-illness!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 16:54:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubycrowned/pseuds/rubycrowned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know I’d do anything.” And the to make it better, make you better hangs unspoken between them and Zayn wants to scream and fight and make Liam bleed because this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do You Know How It Ends?

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt at the LJ Ziam ficathon - to be based around Richard Siken's poem 'Wishbone'

“What do you want? What do you need?”

The words roll off Liam’s tongue like a familiar chant, like a prayer, like an ‘ _oh god this can’t be happening too young too soon too everything please no please_.’

But wait. No.

Those are  _Zayn’s_  thoughts pounding a rhythm through his head, a drum beat.

A death march.

And Liam’s still there, twitching anxiously with the need to something, to fix this,  _somehow_ , but it’s too late and too much and why does Zayn’s life (ha) feel like it’s all of a sudden a hyperbole?

“I will do  _anything_ ,” says the boy with the crinkled eyes; but now the crinkles are in his forehead and the chocolate warmth of his irises has turned into thick pools of brown sludge of fear. And Zayn feels like maybe he could get trapped in them forever and maybe it’s not the sunny, cloudless day he had been hoping for but would it really be such a bad thing when faced with the alternative?

Liam would do anything. Zayn is certain.

But anything isn’t what he wants or needs. It’s definitely not something he can have.

So, instead, Zayn slides trembling fingers against Liam’s rough palm, focusing on the catch of skin on skin.

Instead, Zayn closes his eyes and narrows his world to his hand in Liam’s lap, being clutched to the point of pain in the other boy’s grip.

This is what he remembers about that day.

***

There was always the ‘what if’.

What if they had picked it up sooner, if it hadn’t been ignored. If, if,  _if_.

But Zayn thinks that even if he had gotten a do-over, he still wouldn’t have known.

Because it was just a sore knee.

It was a bang into a table or a poor landing trying to imitate Niall’s ridiculous leaps across stage. It was nothing.

It didn’t go away.

So maybe Zayn actually twisted it quite good then (and maybe he should’ve been able to remember what it was if he screwed it so thoroughly, but he’d probably been out drinking with Louis and it was _nothing_ ) but he could go see a physio or get Liam to strap it up and it would be fine soon.

And it still didn’t go away.

And Zayn wasn’t able to stop from limping  _all_  the time and maybe he was having to take more than a couple painkillers so that he could jump about the stage every other night but the tour was almost ending and  _surely_  it’d heal by then. Or after then, once he’d had some rest.

Still there.

So, feeling stupid complaining about a sore knee, he went to the doctor.

Eventually.

***

The first time, there had been hope.

There had been  _you’re young and fit and fighting and yes this is an aggressive form and yes the scan picked up more than one lesion on your femur and yes those painful tests you’ve had so far are_ nothing _compared with what’s to come_  but there had been hope.

There had been solutions and operations and drugs.

There had been press releases and indefinite hiatuses because  _we’re five not four and we can’t do this without him_  and other probably important things which Zayn chose to ignore in favour of wrapping himself in the comfort of his family; of his parents and his sisters and the four boys who meant more to him than he had thought possible four years ago.

In the boy with the eyes and the heart which somehow became his almost a year ago before being wrenched right back again, who sat there begging, “I’ll do anything. We can do this. You saved me, now I need to save you.” And Zayn had never quite understood that because yes Liam had hit a rough patch after Danielle left and maybe Zayn had been there and picked up the pieces and put him back together as best he could, had sat back and tried not to tug at the frayed edges of his chest when she came back.

And yes, Liam has always seemed like he wanted to make it up to him, like it was a debt to be owed. But Liam didn’t even know how deep that ran; the red next to Liam’s name that he didn’t even know was there, from that very first moment when he’d taken Zayn’s heart and kept it for himself (although, was it really taken when, once Zayn realised what he’d lost, he would have proffered it freely even when it made him bleed). So he let Liam give what he could, do what he could, and didn’t argue the point.

And because, at this point, Zayn would take everything, knew he would suck Liam dry if it meant getting well, being whole.

***

The second time, it’s much the same.

But this time, instead of hope there is a thick black scream of  **terminal** scrawled over everything; into Zayn’s bones and worming its way into his lungs and Zayn had always worried that it’d be his lungs eventually, but not like this.

And he tries to scrub it from his memory, tries to only recall the grip of Liam’s hands around his as they sit in the cold, plastic seats of the hospital.

But it permeates everything, creeping and growing unknown, just like the cause of it.

And he’s being pulled into the black and he’s not ready and he doesn’t want to go.

***

There used to be sunlight.

A period of time where things weren’t perfect but they were better than Zayn had let himself hope for in years.

A time when Danielle was gone and Liam was Zayn’s (mostly) and Zayn’s days were filled with smiles and nights with reverential touches and the word  _happy_  was on the tip of his tongue.

But even the sunniest day won’t last forever (and this had never quite managed to be that anyway). Eventually clouds roll in, night falls, you get burnt and end up hiding in the shade.

***

Zayn became greedy. Because why the hell not.

His body was betraying him, he felt like shit and there was Liam, sitting with a sympathetic Danielle but still looking at Zayn; not like he used to, like he could devour him then and there, the not-so-angelic Liam Payne. No, these eyes were full of concern and pain and badly hidden behind a small smile of support that Zayn wanted to kiss off, to bite and lick it out of him until they were both as broken as the other.

Because Liam asks once more, when it’s twilight and just the two of them, “What can I do? You must want something. Just tell me and I’ll give you anything.”

And in the murky light Zayn can almost pretend that the look in his eyes is love and that the dull ache inside him isn’t just the pain relief wearing off again.

That maybe Zayn could take what he needs from Liam, and yes, they might be twisted and deformed, but it would work. And  _after_ , after, Zayn will be able to build them both back up again from scratch, shiny and new rather than scratched and dented and torn.

***

Liam’s there and his face is close. Zayn thinks maybe he can just make out the individual eyelashes.

“I’ll give you anything. Everything. Just let me know what it is you want.”

It’s long past the point where Zayn wants to punch Liam in the face a little every time he hears those words because it’s only a reminder that there’s something that needs fixed, mended; that Zayn can only take now. He couldn’t punch him now even if he did want to. And fighting Liam has always taken so much more energy than anything else.

He wants to tell him don’t bother.

It’s not worth it anymore. He’s not worth it.

He manages a weak laugh, raspy from disuse.

So close.

“Sunlight.”

***

“I want you.”

And sometimes Zayn thinks he’d like to be able to shove Liam up against the wall or a desk, the closest solid object, and just  _take him_  and use him until he was so thoroughly fucked that their roles might be reversed because Zayn’s pretty sure that Liam could handle… _this_ , better than he is.

But the surgery has left him with a permanent limp now and the repeated chemotherapy treatments have left him too weak to lift solidstrong _healthy_  Liam in his arms, legs wrapped around his back and grinding against him.

So Zayn takes what he gets.

He doesn’t know where Danielle is those nights (she’s still around somewhere, Zayn pictures her hiding in the shadows, lurking) but then he finds he doesn’t really care.

He’s not that fussy anymore.

He does, however, like to imagine sometimes what she would think if she knew; could see.

Could see the way Liam touches him, gentle lips and even gentler hands caressing his body, scarred and wasted (and not just figuratively anymore).

Could feel the way Liam opens him up like he’s afraid Zayn might tear and Zayn  _is_  torn, inside and out, and Liam may as well have slit him with a knife but it’s all Zayn has left and he can’t find it in himself to blame Liam, not even now when it would be so much easier.

***

Liam sneaks them out in that dead time of night when even the animals are near silent.

Past the rooms filled with family and the boys keeping vigil, because there really isn’t long to go now and Zayn isn’t at peace with that but he’s not stupid; he knows he’s not a lot there anymore and he can almost feel himself slipping away and he is  _terrified_  but he’s almost lost the will to fight for it now.

As Liam rolls him outside in his wheelchair – and fuck, Zayn Malik in a wheelchair, bundled up like a granny (and still shivering at the chill); age 21 and one foot in the grave, the other barely dragging him back, who would’ve thought – Zayn remembers something he once heard about more deaths occurring in the hours before dawn than any other time and hopes (where did that come from he thought that was lost many miles back), hopes that isn’t true;  _not yet, not today_.

***

And eventually Zayn is too weak or just weak enough that he can’t even stand Liam’s sweet fucking.

“What can I do?”

Liam stays, even then; crawls under the sweat-soaked, sickness-ridden covers and lies to face Zayn, to curl him into his warm body even though Zayn hardly remembers what heat is anymore.

“You know I’d do anything.”

And the  _to make it better, make you better_  hangs unspoken between them and Zayn wants to scream and fight and make Liam  _bleed_  because this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

Zayn was supposed to be the one taking from Liam, taking back what was owed plus interest because Zayn saved Liam when he needed it and Liam was always here whispering  _I’ll give you anything_ but it was all empty promises.

And Zayn wants to know why, if Liam was supposed to be the one giving then why the hell does Zayn feel like he’s been drained of almost everything he is?

It was supposed to be love, he  _pretended_  it was love but it’s not, not really, not in the way Zayn wants; not blue sky and sunshine. This love he doesn’t understand, and he wonders if Liam does, if he gets this thing between them in a way he doesn’t or if he’s just waiting for it to play out so he can go back to his  _life_.

It wasn’t supposed to be this.

Zayn wasn’t supposed to                             no

It wasn’t supposed to be this.

***

They drive until they reach a beach.

Zayn doesn’t know how long or far or which one because facts like time and which is the closest excuse for a beach to home seem to escape him now.

Liam’s there with steady hands and strong arms and half a mountain of blankets to provide some not-heat but less-cold and padding for protruding bones.

But when they lie on the sand and Liam’s arm is around him Zayn can almost pretend that it’s years ago and everything is fine and maybe Zayn’s just a bit wasted still because that would explain the dullness and the numbing and the slight rolling of his insides.

Zayn wishes he could hate Liam.

But summoning that sort of will is too much of an effort now. It always was too much of an effort, really.

It’s so much easier to just forget everything but right now and maybe pretend that promises and wishes still mean something.

And eventually Liam’s grip on him tightens slightly and Zayn drags his eyelids open wills his eyes to focus because this feels important and he stares out in the direction of Liam’s arm.

Sunlight.

***

**Author's Note:**

> *sobs* and runs into a hiding spot to avoid the death threats...


End file.
